Vaccination was introduced to China from the English factory at Canton, and Sir George Staunton translated into Chinese a tract on Cowpox, and had it printed at Canton in 1805, the translator’s name and the foreign origin of the practice being suppressed. Jenner, writing to Dunning, 10th December, 1806, said—
From Canton I have a most curious production—a pamphlet on Vaccination in the Chinese language. Little did I think, my friend, when our correspondence first began, that Heaven had in store for me such abundant happiness. May I be grateful!
The Chinese had their own system of variolation, namely, the use of pulverised smallpox scabs as snuff; but some of them accepted vaccination, tried it, and dropped it when they found it did not keep off the disease as warranted. Smallpox in China is almost exclusively a disease of childhood, and is little dreaded. Dr. D. F. Rennie, medical officer to the British Embassy at Peking in 1861-62, says of that city—
Since 1820 vaccination (introduced from Canton) has been practised to a limited extent among the population—probably one-fifth may be vaccinated. At one time it was believed to afford protection, Smallpox not having been so common immediately after its introduction. Of recent years, however, confidence in it has considerably diminished, owing to the frequency with which those are attacked who have been vaccinated.[250]
Persia was sometimes referred to in the ravings that went on as to the triumphs of vaccination in the East; but what was known of Persia? The practice was introduced where Europeans were resident, but it never became general. Dr. C. J. Willis has recently described surgery and medicine in Persia as extremely rude and superstitious, and that “vaccination is not in favour, whilst inoculation, or the direct communication of the disorder, by placing the patient in the same bed with one suffering from smallpox of the most virulent type, is the method pursued.”[251]
It was natural enough for Jenner, in presence of failure and contempt in England, to appeal to success in the East, and to try to overwhelm his adversaries with evidence which they could not overtake; but any one of judicial temper must have perceived that if vaccination was to be vindicated, data of a very different order would have to be forthcoming. Where the number of the population in a distant region was unknown, where the ordinary prevalence of smallpox among the people was undefined, where the extent of artificial variolation was unspecified, and the existence and intensity of related forms of zymotic disease were undescribed, what conclusion could be drawn as to the efficacy of vaccination that a man of science was bound to respect? Why should certain knowledge in England be surrendered for assertion from abroad.
FOOTNOTES:
[231] Baron’s Life of Jenner, vol. 1. p. 410.
[232] Baron’s Life of Jenner, vol. i. p. 409.
[233] Ibid. vol. i. p. 419.